The Impossible Balancing Act

I am the person who rolls my eyes at the “S” in the ESG acronym, the textbook Environmental, Social, and Governance framework of sustainability. I’m frustrated by the lack of progress we’re making as an industry on the environmental side and want us to exclusively focus on better recycling systems, carbon footprint reductions, eliminating harmful chemicals that enter our waterways and kill critical species, etc. Governance is a given, a regrettably important requirement to force our greedy capitalist brains to do the right thing. 

But social – social is the thing I want to skip over every time it comes up in our internal sustainability meetings. Of course it’s important – critical, even – but in my mind, it’s a different area of focus, an HR responsibility, rather than something that’s going to help us move the needle on making this earth a better, safer, cleaner place. 

As this column forces me to reflect on being a student of the earth, I am increasingly reminded that true sustainability cannot be siloed. We can’t invest in sustainability infrastructure while ignoring the needs of our employees and guaranteeing their well-being across all aspects of their lives. Sustainability requires a foundational look at how we practice stewardship – at work, at home, and everywhere in between. 

I recently had my second child. While I was on maternity leave, our company restructured and I was promoted to general manager. When I left to have my baby, I was a sales manager with six direct reports and lofty revenue targets. When I returned to work eight weeks later, I had 10 direct reports, 100 employees under them, and operational responsibilities over three divisions. 

The last few months have been both the most rewarding and most stressful of my life. They’ve also brought the realities of balancing parenthood and a career into sharp focus – and opened my eyes to the naivety of assuming the “S” in ESG was just a check box. Supporting parents in the workplace is one tiny piece in the “Social” umbrella, but my personal experience combined with a recent report by the Pew Research Center has me reflecting on our broken parent support system in the US. 

A recent report by the Pew Research Center, “For Working Parents, the Boundary Between Work and Family Is Often Blurred,” highlights exactly how deep this crisis runs. Out of the 2,242 working parents surveyed, 54% of them find it difficult to balance their professional and family responsibilities, with mothers consistently bearing the heaviest mental and operational load. And 62% of full-time working mothers report struggling to find that equilibrium.

One mother captured the raw reality of this struggle in a single sentence: “I’m supposed to work like I don’t have kids and supposed to parent like I don’t have a job.”  

Can I get an AMEN?!   

But the boundaries between work and home don’t exist anymore. According to the data, 70% of parents handle parenting tasks during work, and 59% are answering work emails or managing job demands while spending time with their children. We are asking people to be in two places at once, and it is driving an entire generation of working parents toward a state of chronic burnout.

My own experience is evidence of this. It’s impossible to be the kind of parent I need to be and the employee I strive to be. Something always has to give.

Then comes the literal cost. Beyond the emotional and mental strain, the financial barrier to remaining in the workforce is astronomical. My husband and I are currently paying $48,000 a year just to keep our two children in full-time daycare. And this is no Ritz – it was the most affordable option out of the six centers we called when we moved to our neighborhood. 

For many families in our industry, $48,000 isn’t just a stretch; it’s a financial impossibility. When childcare costs equal or exceed a parent’s take-home pay, we aren’t just facing an economic challenge; we are witnessing a systemic failure that forces talented individuals – primarily women – out of the workforce entirely. 

What Can Employers Do?

We have a responsibility as employers to build family-resilient operations by creating an environment that’s as supportive of families as possible.

Here are actionable ways employers can address this issue:

1. Flexible Hours and Core Working Blocks
For office, sales, and administrative staff, rigid 9-to-5 requirements are a relic of the past. By offering flexible arrival and departure windows – or establishing core collaborative hours (such as 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM) – we give parents the breathing room to handle school drop-offs, doctors appointments, and daycare pick-up windows without feeling like they are sneaking out or failing their teams.

The people who work for me know that I don’t care what hours they work as long as they A) show up to all team meetings and B) get their work done. If they’re leaving at 3 to get their kids and picking things back up after their kids are down, more power to them. 

This requires a mindset shift of focusing on output, not hours worked. 

2. The “Parent Shift”
Flexibility with hourly employees can be much harder. One way around this is to introduce a specialized “parent shift.” This part-time or modified shift runs from, say, 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM, intended to align with school pick-up and drop-off. This unlocks an untapped pool of skilled labor in parents who want to work and have to (or want to) be home for their kids before/after school.

This shift is perfect for hourly support roles that can fit into a variety of places: think customer service and order entry, inside sales for prospecting and cold calling, spiders who help set up jobs or handle waste, QC testers to take the burden of repetitive testing off a full time QC technician, etc. 

3. Robust Parental Leave and Re-entry Support
Offering competitive, fully paid parental leave for new mothers and fathers is no longer a fringe, luxury benefit; it is a baseline, a testament to the appreciation we as employers have for the parents we employ. We recently increased our paid leave policy from six weeks to eight for mothers and one week to two for fathers. We still have work to do – two weeks of paternity leave isn’t nearly enough to support a newborn and freshly postpartum mom – but I can appreciate the incremental progress. 

Employers should also consider “ramp-up” structures for parents returning from leave. We allow moms to return to work part-time, with part-time pay, for up to a month if they decide they need to ease back into work.  

4. Lifting the Financial Burden
In an ideal world, our public education system would evolve to match the realities of modern working families, offering public school options for children before they turn five years old. Universal pre-K and early childhood public education would fundamentally shift the economic landscape for young parents.

“When childcare costs equal or exceed a parent’s take-home pay, we aren’t just facing an economic challenge; we are witnessing a systemic failure that forces talented individuals – primarily women – out of the workforce entirely.”

Short of that government intervention, the onus falls on the private sector to bridge the gap. Companies can offer a benefit that covers or subsidizes the cost of daycare. Some are even building childcare facilities themselves – see Belmark’s latest Family Center investment. Smaller businesses should consider co-sponsoring a shared daycare facility with other businesses in the area, splitting the overhead while providing a life-changing benefit to their collective workforces.

Honoring the Mother

“The earth was entrusted to us in order that it be mother for us, capable of giving to each one what is necessary to live…The earth is generous and holds nothing back from those who safeguard it. The earth, which is mother of all, asks for respect, not violence” – Pope Francis, Our Mother Earth.

Mother Earth holds nothing back from those who safeguard her. She is generous, resilient, and life-giving – but only when treated with respect. When we exploit her resources without giving her time to regenerate, the system breaks down.

The same applies to the mothers and parents in our workforce. If we don’t respect their boundaries, provide fair compensation, and build supportive workplace structures, they’ll find somewhere else that will. 

Let’s look at our operations this month with fresh eyes. What change can you implement today to ensure that the parents in your workforce aren’t forced to choose between their livelihoods and their children? 

And to the working moms out there – keep kicking ass.

Ginnie Gandy leads the Release Liner division at Channeled Resources Group. She is passionate about the liner, label, and packaging industries. She chairs TLMI’s Label Leaders of Tomorrow group and is a regular presenter at industry events. Outside of work, Ginnie can usually be found chasing after her two young kids with her husband, exploring new hiking trails, and searching for the best oat milk latte in town.